Normally, Catherine's afternoon would be spent in a comfortable, soundproof office with thick carpets and the fragrance of freshly ground coffee in the air.
She would sit on an ergonomic leather chair in front of a wide mahogany desk, upon which financial statements awaiting her review and signature, draft commercial contracts, and encrypted communications from branches across the continent were neatly arranged.
This was her battlefield, a chessboard composed of numbers and clauses, and her weapons were precise calculations and keen insight into the human mind.
Watching the numbers representing the interests of the Roman Merchant Group steadily grow and branch out on screens or sheets of paper was the realm she excelled at and enjoyed—and where she ought to be right now.
Yet the reality was—
Surrounding her was a thick, bone-chilling grayish-white mist with visibility under ten meters.
The air reeked of a nauseating, sweetish stench—a mixture of decaying soil, rotting corpses, and magical residue.
Buzz!
A rotting limb—unclear which body part it had belonged to—was sent flying past the tip of Catherine’s carefully styled golden hair with a bone-grating screech by a magical shockwave unleashed by someone up ahead. With a splat, it slammed onto a broken tombstone not far behind her, scattering minced flesh and black juices.
Catherine stood frozen on the spot. Her azure eyes had lost their usual calm and calculation, leaving only a nearly numb sense of absurdity and a physical revulsion toward the filthy surroundings.
The expensive, tailored hunting outfit she wore was already splattered with quite a few spots of mud and suspicious stains.
This is definitely not how my plan was supposed to go.
She repeated this sentence in her heart for the hundredth time.
She had clearly crafted a meticulous script for an accidental encounter and prepared appropriate opening lines.
And yet...
For no apparent reason, she had been half-invited and half-forced by this gray-haired girl into an area radiating such an ominous atmosphere!
Granted, her theoretical grades ranked among the best in the second year, and her magic standard was indisputably up to par.
But to her, magic was more like a necessary requirement and a language for certain special occasions.
She had never planned to become a practicing mage.
Forcing her to risk her life here fighting against rotting skeletons like those hot-headed students?
This was simply a massive waste of her time and talent!
And the culprit behind all this chaos was the girl up ahead, brandishing her magic conduit with wild abandon, her long gray hair fluttering with her movements as she let out enthusiastic laughs, slaughtering the surrounding undead like chopping vegetables—Victoria Cecil.
"Senior Catherine!"
Victoria suddenly executed a neat spin, smashing the skull of a skeleton trying to pounce from the side with the tail of her staff. She turned her head, her gray eyes looking at the tightly frowning Catherine, her tone carrying undisguised urgency:
"Please don't slack off in the back! How about being a bit useful? We're a team! If you keep acting like this, I won't give you a share of the reward when we split the loot later!"
Catherine: "...?"
She clearly knows my surname, so why does she think I care about the reward for killing undead?
Thinking with business logic, the time cost of me standing here and the cleaning fee for these clothes far exceed the potential total earnings of this mission.
Is she... a complete idiot?
Catherine felt her temples throbbing.
However, thinking of her deeper purpose in approaching the two, as well as Greg's baffling request, she took a deep breath of the stench-laden air, forcibly suppressing her urge to snark.
"Understood."
She gave a concise reply, her voice returning to its usual composure.
Raising her hand, her fingertips rapidly traced a few wind-attribute runes.
"Wind Blade: Flurry!"
Several translucent, sharp-edged high-pressure wind blades instantly formed. Emitting faint screeches, they cleanly bypassed Victoria up ahead like guided missiles, slicing into the weak points such as the neck bones and spinal joints of several shambling undead in front of her.
With crisp cracking sounds, those few undead collapsed like dismantled building blocks, scattering all over the ground as their soulfire extinguished.
"Mm, that's more like it!"
Victoria nodded with satisfaction, seemingly approving of Catherine finally putting in some effort.
Then, she turned her gaze to another girl who had been following closely behind her right flank, pale-faced and trembling slightly.
"Silvia!"
Victoria's voice was full of trust:
"I'll leave those slow ones on my left to you! Use your light magic to give them a quick end!"
"N-No way!"
Hearing this, Silvia shook her head violently like a frightened fawn. Glistening tears instantly welled up in her pink eyes, her voice laced with a sob:
"M-Mr. Undead... are way too terrifying! The way they look... I-I can't bring myself to cast magic while looking at them! I'm sorry, Victoria! I really can't do it!"
Catherine felt another strong wave of dissonance and confusion.
She's afraid of the undead?
According to intelligence, Silvia Lorraine could use light-attribute magic with extreme proficiency, and light-attribute magic naturally countered undead creatures with inherent bonus damage. Theoretically, she should be the best candidate to deal with these monsters.
So what was the deal with her current state?
Catherine began to seriously doubt the accuracy of the intelligence she had gathered earlier, even wondering if she had gotten the direction of her investigation wrong from the very beginning.
Perhaps these two girls had no special connection to the Holy Church of Light at all, and were just... unusual freshmen with quirky personalities?
"Silvia, come on!"
Yet Victoria seemed accustomed to her friend's old habit. As she used an instant-cast Fireball to pick off another approaching undead, she shouted encouragingly:
"I know you can do it! Think about it, do you really want that guy Greg to keep looking down on us? Thinking we can't do anything right without him?"
"G-Greg... Senior..."
That name seemed to carry a strange magic.
When the name "Greg" reached her ears, Silvia's body shuddered violently.
Uncontrollably, her mind flashed back to the scene she had witnessed earlier of Greg surrounded by Chloe and Yelena.
The pure fear in her eyes receded like a tide in an instant, replaced by a deep darkness.
She raised her head toward the rotten zombies clawing the air in the direction Victoria had pointed out. The tears in her pink eyes were gone, leaving only absolute focus and... a sliver of cold revulsion.
She merely pointed her slender finger lightly at those undead.
Buzz—!
Two soft pale-gold Light Barriers, brimming with massive holy power, materialized out of thin air on both sides of the undead horde without warning!
Then, the two barriers squeezed inward with unstoppable force!
Sizzle—!!!
A harsh sound of purification echoed through the mist.
Trapped in the middle, those undead didn't even have time to utter a final howl. Under the crushing pressure of pure light power, they melted rapidly like snow meeting sunlight, ultimately compressed into scorched black specks.
Even the patch of land beneath where they stood was purified into a clean small space.
Rate on N.U.
